Let us return for a few days to Ekaterinburg. Yankel Yurovsky had reappeared in the death-house in the morning of July 17th. None of the Russian guards knew where he had been. Medvedev had heard vaguely that he had “gone to the woods.” At the same time there appeared the reprieved thief Beloborodov and his master, Isai Goloshchekin. The movables belonging to the murdered family went to satisfy their rapacious instincts. Some of the witnesses describe tables laden with precious stones, jewellry, and all sorts of other articles scattered about the Commandant’s room. Everything had been ransacked, and what was not found to be worth keeping was thrown away or destroyed in the fireplaces, which were blazing despite the summer heat. Yurovsky and Goloshchekin travelled by motor-car to the woods on the 17th, 18th, and 19th, remaining for many hours--in fact whole days--at the iron pits. But all this time the sentries were on duty outside the death-house as if nothing had [Illustration: NEW ENVIRONS OF EKATERINBURG SHOWING ROAD BY WHICH THE BODIES OF MEMBERS OF THE IMPERIAL FAMILY WERE CARRIED, AND THE PIT WHERE THE ASHES WERE BURIED. DISTANCES: EKATERINBURG, 11 MILES, PIT TO KOPTIAKI, 3 MILES. ] happened, so that the people should suspect nothing. They were removed only on the fourth day, when the cordon around the wood was also raised. Only then (on July 20th) was the announcement made at Red meetings and in official proclamations that “Nicholas the Sanguinary” had been executed. The news was simultaneously transmitted by the wireless stations of the Bolshevist Government, and appeared in _The London Times_ of July 22, 1918, in the following form:-- “At the first session of the Central Executive Committee elected by the Fifth Congress of the Councils a message was made public, received by direct wire from the Ural Regional Council, concerning the shooting of the ex-Tsar, Nicholas Romanov. “Recently Ekaterinburg, the capital of the Red Ural, was seriously threatened by the approach of the Czecho-Slovak bands. At the same time a counter-revolutionary conspiracy was discovered, having for its object the wresting of the tyrant from the hands of the Council’s authority by armed force. In view of this fact, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council decided to shoot the ex-Tsar, Nicholas Romanov. This decision was carried out on July 16. “The wife and son of Romanov have been sent to a place of security. Documents concerning the conspiracy which were discovered have been forwarded to Moscow by a special messenger.